10-30-2018, 08:42 PM
(10-30-2018, 03:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: And that fact, if so it is, does not change the truth of what I said above.
The point is, if you base your values and your ideas of life on "matter," it is no less a myth and a symbol than "spirit" or "soul."
Of course, 'spirit' and 'soul' can impart meaning upon matter. With spirit and soul, rather inexpensive materials such as paint and canvas a competent artist can create something of great value. Soulless, spirit-dead activity creates objects often of low value for the inputs used in their creation. Such things might be useful only if gigantic (let us say a dam or a highway).
Quote:And to be clear, belief in soul as opposed to matter does not destroy the ability to do science or to develop technology. In fact, the real originators of today's materialist science also actually believed in astrology, alchemy and religion. They wanted to demonstrate divine order. This quest emerged out of western civilization including medieval and renaissance times.
But the scientists no longer use alchemy (which is the predecessor of highly-useful chemistry that relies upon sophisticated machinery and measuring devices) or astrology. I concede that however useless I find astrology, it at least allowed the development of some sophisticated mathematics. Religion? Little can more effectively comfort people in hopeless situations.
Quote:If you base your ideas of reality on what's useful for glorious achievements, then you have no sense of essential values, and the purpose or value of all this usefulness. Useful for what?
Great efforts can lead to questionable achievements that waste the effort, losses, and material used.
Quote:People like me see the benefits of materialist science and its technology, but also see its price, for example:
1. climate change and other pollution and destruction of precious nature, ecosystems and wildlife
Ironically it is objective science that establishes the danger of climate change and can predict consequences upon nature, ecosystems, and wildlife. Anyone who wants to protect Nature might as well know some mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology. For dealing with the economics of it all, one might want to study some accounting, economics, and business management. Big Business is highly adept at convincing people that those ivory-tower activists who rhapsodize about the glory of Nature threaten livelihoods. So long as the intellectual hired guns of Big Business can convince people that greater pollution means that people get to keep their jobs, the polluters will win.
Quote:2. our personal alienation from earth and life, and from ourselves and ability to have good relationships, do well in sports, etc. As Bergson says, the intellect is characterized by the inability to understand life.
Trying to understand Life looks like one of the supreme challenges of the intellect.
Quote:3. the disenchantment of the world without appreciation that it IS a miracle
The most effective way in which to control people is to keep their focus on personal concerns low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Quote:4. more dangerous weapons of war
Military procurement is supremely profitable. People are playing a sick game of chicken with weapons of mass production. The profit motive is a strong incentive to do bad things.
Quote:5. the use of technology to further the aims of dictators
Look also at exploitative elites who turn to deceitful populists who then betray the people that those politicians have seduced with their demagoguery.
T is for tyrant
R is for ruthless
U is for unscrupulous
M is formalicious
P is for perverse
Quote:6. the loss of respect for the arts, and for that spiritual quest that some dismiss as nonsense, but which is the most essential thing in life and your very being
When life gets stale, the arts are the solution. Man does not live by bread alone, and the paradox of hedonism (intense, crude pleasures are ephemeral and cannot be enjoyed often enough as pleasure because they are potentially destructive and fiendishly costly in excess).
Quote:7. diminishing returns from materialist medicine; inability to recognize the value of alternative therapies, especially for lifestyle diseases, and tendency to repress these alternatives
Quit smoking, don't drink to excess, control weight, don't participate in reckless sexuality, get some exercise... Some people have a "death style".
Quote:The above does not make me a luddite who doesn't want or appreciate technology. It makes me a skeptic about (a) tech-oriented materialist worldview. I see there's a place for mechanical cause and effect ideas, and how they facilitated industrial technology. But there are other ideas that are also valuable, and in the quantum age, I'm not sure really how materialist science really is anymore, anyway. Opinions differ on that. What is clear is that a materialist philosophy is not, and never was, needed to do good science.
The fault with materialism is that one can never reduce all knowledge to the actions of subatomic particles, which materialism must do to allow a perfect prediction of events.
Quote:A science guy who does the videos called It's OK to be Smart ends his shows with "stay curious." Good advice!
Obvious agreement. Smugness is not a good attitude for scientific inquiry.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.